I took my brother and his family to Walt'z Fish Shak for dinner last Saturday night. Rich and I had been there before at the recommendation of our neighbors (Florida natives). Once again the flavors of fresh fish and real cooking came through. Yum! Besides that the place is fraught with fun! It's small and sometimes a bit sticky, but it is very, very tasty. Everyone enjoyed their meal.
My brother and his family were visiting us from Chicago this past weekend. They escaped the -12 degrees and enjoyed sunshine and fall-like temperatures here in Redington Beach, Florida. While out for a walk my brother and I happened across a fisher man. He had a bird following because he kept catching these little sunfish and throwing them back into the water. In other words, doing all the work for the birds! Do you see the white bird in flight? That was a great white egret.
When I got back to my computer and looked at my pictures, I couldn't believe I actually caught a picture of the pelican catching the fish. He's the one at the bottom of the picture and he has a sunfish in his beak. The two brown pelicans are in front and you can see the great blue heron bringing up the rear.
There is a fabulous dive bar just up the street from us in Indian Shores. Mahuffer's aka Sloppy Joe's is a SCREAM! You either scream and run the other way or scream for fun. Considering the relaxed blues music, we decided to scream for fun.
Okay, maybe it's not the Christmas of the crooners, but I'm quite tickled to be here for the winter. Temps have dropped to the 60's but we had a good spell of the 80's and Rich and I actually went into the Gulf with our bathing suits on! Do you see the pirate ship? They take families out on it. We've heard the pirate calls when we've been out on our boat and witnessed subsequent children in pirates hats...
The Monster and I were both agreeing on how wonderful Florida is in winter. Temps have been extraordinarily kind recently.
It's the colors I just can't get enough of!
On New Year's Day we took a drive up to Honeymoon Island with a stop in the cute town of Dunedin on the way home. We saw a nesting owl and the beach was littered with small shells being kissed by frothy waves. We don't have to drive that far for natural beauty though. Today we watched the dolphins swimming in our inlet as we ate our dinner!
We didn't have any trouble deciding what to do for New Year's Eve 2008. St. Petersburg has a nonprofit dedicated to bringing us entertainment and revelry as we greet the new year -First Night. It's true. It was no spectacular, but it was fun and walkable and kept us busy. The button with flashing lights meant we were supportive $$. Williams Park had shadow-light-show partitions where one could display personal interpretations of the music and so of course I did.
Live music was everywhere inside and out. We visited two churches. Watching people move in and out was as interesting as our morning beach walks. The tide came in, the tide went out, and throughout we witnessed not a menagerie of shells, plants and animals, but instead all sorts of people dressed all sorts of ways and in all sorts of moods.
Rich took this fabulous picture of the band. There was a blues band playing complete with a blind, black vocalist. That man sure did like to pose for pictures!
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